Google News Archive Forum

An interesting article in tomorrows NY Times about the power of Google. They question if Google can maintain it “Do No Evil” style. It goes on to cite a few complaints about Google's rankings, but seems to be fairly balanced.

Nice quote from Brett....."People optimize for Google; they study Google,'' said Brett Tabke, the chief executive of Webmasterworld.com. "It's Google in the morning, Google at night, Google all the time. " Might be a song in there........ jb

A search for "St. Louis" and "embroidery" used to list (read the article for name), a small embroidery store in St. Louis, in third or fourth place, said (read the article for name), the company's chief executive. Since November, he said, it has "dropped off the face of the earth."

"It was devastating," said (read the article for name), who said he didn't complain directly to Google because he assumed his company was too small to matter.

A quick check of whois information shows that (read the article for name), has duplicate sites online, keywordkeyword.com and keyword-keyword.com, hosted at different ip addresses. Tsk, tsk.

This is a common mistake with news reporting about Google, that they don't check their Google detractors to see if they're quoting someone who caused their own problems. Makes Google look bad for getting rid of spammers.

That's why I checked the whois information to see if the sites were being served from different ip's and thus duplicates, or if one domain was merely redirecting to the other domain. They were the same website being served from different ip's.

Archive.org didn't cache the hyphenated domain. If you do a search on google for where the hyphenated domain (without www) shows up on a web page, you'll see the evidence of the duplicate in the ransom note shown by Googles non-indexed supplemental results.

The domains are mine (well, I'm - shall we say - fighting for control over the hyphenated domain).

The site to which the hyphenated domain goes is to my old web hosting site. They're good folk, but our moving to another hosting company wasn't exactly smooth between us.

So, I appreciate all the more knowedgeable information presented, but honestly, I'm not an SEO (but trying to learn quickly), I'm just trying to do business on the web. I'm much better at digitizing embroidery designs than designing web pages, or getting them ranked.

I've spent a good deal of time over at web pro, and have found their input invaluable. I'll take that here as well.

No feelings on the sleeve, If you have criticism, let me know - there's a ton on which I can improve, and if I've offended anyone, I apologise.

If you do a search on google for where the hyphenated domain (without www) shows up on a web page, you'll see the evidence of the duplicate in the ransom note shown by Googles non-indexed supplemental results.

I was trying to see what you meant. Could you explain what you mean by a ransom note?

Yes, welcome, Mark. Nice to see the dignity in your reaction. And really an interesting example of how easy it sometimes is to get into a situation where you do not look particularly well. Hope you get your problems sorted out.

Thanks for the words. If I'm not looking particularly well, I guess I ought to respond. Two issues really.

First, our changing service providers did not coincide in any way with a drop in google rankings. We changed hosting sites early this year, our rankings suffered last year (when both URLs pointed to the same page).

Second, an earlier post stated that both urls pointed to the same page _yesterday_, that just isn't true, I wish it were, because we have a number of domains that still point to that site, only two of which ever went live and were indexed (both those sites are those under this topic, one we moved, the rest we'll move when we have the extra cash).

So, in a nut-shell, our rankings have come back up, not quite as well as they were, but better. Mostly, I've been paying attention to back links, something I've learned in forums like this. More importantly, I've also focused on the business, making sure that when someone does purchase from us, they're going to be a repeat customer and spread a "good report" by word of mouth.

Does anyone here think of Google as a "Do-Gooder Company"? I look at Google as the being to the Internet what Microsoft is to the home computer. Sergey Brin and Larry Page have about as much commitment to the public interest, and probably less, than does Bill Gates. Not that I necessarily consider it surprising that "greed is GOOD" is the mantra at the Googleplex. After all, they are a for profit business.

Full disclosure, etc, etc. Our little .org site rocks in Google, Y, and MSN, Overture, Bob's-your-uncle's SE, because it's the best site for what it does. So, I don't have a grudge against Google because of serps...

BUT, if I read, "Do no evil", one more time about G, and how they're such a swell bunch of guys, I'm going to puke. They're trying to make a big pile of money, (the raison d'etre of the whole thing... they're not doing all of this to bring peace and joy to the planet), and putting some BS spin on it. This IPO is the limit... Americans only, eh? I think it's time to change the default page for my browsers.

Does anyone here think of Google as a "Do-Gooder Company"? I look at Google as the being to the Internet what Microsoft is to the home computer. Sergey Brin and Larry Page have about as much commitment to the public interest, and probably less, than does Bill Gates. Not that I necessarily consider it surprising that "greed is GOOD" is the mantra at the Googleplex. After all, they are a for profit business.

Count me, for one, as a Google fan. Integrity--doing what you say you are going to do--is tough, especially on the scale which G operates. Yet, they have come close to pulling it off. Are their results always perfect? No. But, they are the best. And they have yet to the satisfied with their success. And they have made most everyone who has done business with them on the web either richer, or at least not poorer. That's do-gooder enough for me.

>Are their results always perfect? No. But, they are the best. And they have yet to the satisfied with their success.

Windows is by far the most successful of all OSes. And until the Mac OS X came along, Windows was unquestionably the best OS in the sense that Unix is so complex the vast majority of the population could never figure out how to use it. Or, would even want to use an OS that wasn't mouse oriented.

It's ridiculous for them to ask for that info, so you're entitled to give them ridiculous answers.

I prefer, (by way of declining to supply any answer at all and just leaving their site) that they get the bloody message and remove that requirement.

Its offensive and outrageous. I will not supply any answer whatsoever!

For the record ... I am female and 50. Does that have any bearing on "viewing" their article? I think not! They need to put their nose to the grind stone instead of in my business.

BTW ... I offer the above information willingly and without coercion. I will tell whom I want about myself ... when and where I want ... but no web site should make it compulsory in order to bloody well VIEW an article!

Nope, but as an advertising-supported site, NYTimes.com does have to provide demographic info to its advertisers. I greatly prefer ad-supported news outlets to paid subscription-based or pay-per-article sites, and don't mind providing some info to keep the content free. My hometown newspaper has gone to a fee-per-article after 7 days. It's a real pain.

If providing demographic info bothers people, they should use free e-mail addresses not associated with their name.

<added>Oops, sorry to contribute to the hijacking of this thread. Congrats to Brett on the well-deserved PR. And Mark, this is a great place to hang out to learn how to promote your site and deal with issues like balky web hosts.</added>